Masking As Monogamous

Your natural relationship style or another aspect of performance?

It was a couple of years ago that I walked through a bluebell wood with my partner of 8 years and said ‘if I don’t decolonise my life, I’m not going to make it’. It wasn’t a threat, a warning or even a particularly dramatic realisation. It was a simple truth spoken aloud, at the precise right moment for it to change and potentially save my life. It was from this day that I began to systematically scrutinise each aspect of the way I had been living and being through a decolonial lens, and to slowly but deliberately transform the elements of my existence into alignment with my values, my purpose and my neuro-normal.

The initial changes centred on finding or creating work that aligned with my values and was anti-colonialist by design, as well as deeply getting to know the AJ underneath the years of neuro-performing. The latter has helped me become comfortable and confident in my gender (Nonbinary Trans and all of the genders) and my neurodivergence (Autistic, ADHD) to a point where I am increasingly masking neither. Decolonising my relationship, and my relationship with relationships was not something I had anticipated doing or even realised was needed until it naturally started to shift amidst all the inner work and external transformation that I was working on. My partner and I have talked about the possibility of polyamory for years, but it was me that shut it down originally, telling them that ‘if they loved someone else, it meant they didn’t love me’. I was in such focused pursuit of the fairytale ending (a drug that had been delivered to me steadily since childhood) that it never occurred to me to think about whether it was what I actually wanted or needed, despite years of feeling like monogamy didn’t suit me.

I love spending time with people I am drawn to and I love acting on those attractions and connections when and how it feels right for both of us. This didn’t change when I was in relationships, it was simply the fear of losing said relationship that stopped me from ‘crossing that line’ - and truth be told, it didn’t always do that. And here’s the thing, it never felt wrong. Deceiving someone else, betraying the trust of someone else - that felt wrong. That felt painful and twisted and heavy. Hurting someone else, felt consumingly awful. But acting on my attraction and experiencing connection with someone I felt drawn to? That felt incredibly right. With no language or framework to put my experience and feelings against, I internalised the colonial, patriarchal, rape culture messaging that women who want multiple partners are ‘sluts’ and that when I met the ‘right man’ I would want to ‘settle down’ and commit fully.

And I did. I wanted to commit fully to the man I married. And I most likely could have. I could have put my true feelings and needs in a box and performed heteronormative monogamy, like I performed neurotypicality, gender and my part in the capitalist machine. I was still so far away from knowing myself. Luckily, or perhaps deliberately, I married someone who also wanted to break free from norms that didn’t serve them, and our growth away from our colonised selves has brought us along parallel paths. We are fully committed to each other and want to continue to be together, and we have additional partners who further enrich our lives.

Polyamory, like everything else, can be colonised. There are people bringing their unhealed, white supremacist, colonial bullshit into it everywhere you look. There are polycules that have a ‘one penis only’ rule. There are couples who want to maintain their heteronormative lifestyles in public, so keep their queerness and their additional partners secret from their children and families. There are tons of white, ‘straight’ couples doing all of this while being overtly racist on their dating profiles. I attended a meet up (not a sex party) for polyamorous/ethically non monogamous people a few months ago and I was one of three Global Majority people in a room of about 40. At some point in the evening the only Black guy in the room was referred to as ‘coloured’. I interjected (the speaker had not been addressing me) that he was Black, not coloured and that he had a name, and it was Chris* (changed to protect his identity). The white, cis man replied, ‘you don’t know how he identifies’, to which I said ‘no one identifies as coloured’. When I said that his comment and reply were racist, his white partner (who up until this point had been all over me like a rash) said ‘oh my goodness, he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body’. The concept of white people coveting and desiring Black and brown flesh while simultaneously enacting and denying their racism, was suddenly very present for me. I had been reticent about attending the evening and this painful incident showed me exactly what I was afraid of and exactly why I would never be attending this kind of thing again, unless it was explicitly anti-racist and organised by and for Global Majority people.

There are no right ways to do polyamory (or ethical non monogamy), but I am absolutely certain their are wrong ways to do it, and all of them involve people who are not decolonising themselves. Those people experience shame around their choices, and this shame is a symptom of the unhealed white supremacy and colonial conditioning that also makes them harmful to Global Majority people (this can be true of unhealed Global Majority people, not just white people - white supremacy is a system and we are all upholding it until we choose to actively dismantle it). To navigate polyamory and keep multiple relationships functioning one must radically embrace honesty, consent, boundaries, trust and respect for personal autonomy - these are nourishing practices that directly challenge oppressive systems. There are so many colonial and capitalist-based power dynamics that we are encouraged to play out within ‘traditional monogamy’, and being a good faith participant in polyamory involves challenging all of them. It has become an essential and life-giving component to my personal journey of decolonisation and neuro-embodiment, and it continues to gift me with learning and fulfilment.

Does that mean I think monogamy is entirely constructed? No. If it’s right for you, it’s right for you. Like everything else in the human experience, I believe it is likely a spectrum, that it’s fluid, that it changes with environment and circumstances. And there is nothing more colonial than trying to force people to act from anything but their own agency. Essentially, you do you. But, as with all topics I address in my newsletter, I encourage you to challenge the concept of monogamy for yourself. Not just the relationship style, but to observe and challenge the power dynamics within any romantic and/or sexual relationships you engage in, and to question whether those colonial patterns and systems may be being repeated right there in your kitchen/bedroom/date night restaurant.

— AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• If you engage in romantic and/or sexual relationships, observe the dynamics, the unwritten rules, the patterns, the roles you play. What aspects of these serve you? What aspects of them do not? Where can you challenge colonial norms that do not enrich the relationship or serve the people in it?

• Have you ever considered whether monogamy is right for you? If you think there could be alternatives that are attractive to you, is there space to discuss these feelings with your partner? Or a trusted friend? How can you give yourself the freedom and space to safely explore this?